SAB listing not showing without geo modifier?

[Cordell Crowley]

Have a weird situation going on with a client's business, and after looking into it further it seems like it might be an issue specific to the fact they are an SAB that I'm worried may be a bug.

They are located in Nederland, TX and have a strong ranking both with their GBP and with their website itself in organic. Rank consistently at 1 or 2 on both Google Maps and the organic website rankings for searches such as "nederland florists", "florists near nederland tx", "nederland flower delivery", etc.

The weird part is that when the geo-modifiers are removed in the queries, their Google Maps listing just completely disappears—doesn't even show up on the longer list after clicking "more places". It's just totally gone. Their website still ranks at the top in organic though when this happens, so it's only the GBP that is disappearing, which is another thing that leads me to believe it may be a bug with their SAB GBP.

I attached just a couple screenshots here for reference; have more though. Sparkle and Co. Florist is the business in question. I did some research on other clients and found similar-ish trends but truthfully I don't have many other SAB businesses (and the ones I do have don't rank as consistently as this one), so it's hard to get enough good data which is I wanted to reach out here get others' opinions.

 

[ElizabethRule]

Google claims that SABs should not rank any worse than businesses with their address showing, but that is not the case when we tested it Does Hiding Your Address Impact your Google Business Profile Ranking? - Sterling Sky Inc

For what it's worth, when I do a search for "florist" with my location set to "Nederland, TX' they are #1 in the local pack, see below. The address is also showing, did you change this recently?

Do you use a grid rank tracking tool to check rankings for explicit vs implicit keywords? If not you should as manual checks like this are largely unreliable.

 

[Tony Wang]

If you're not using a grid ranking tool, at least use a location spoof tool (I use the "gs location changer" chrome extension). That's the first thing I thought of, unless you're located in the same town.

 

[Cordell Crowley]

If you're not using a grid ranking tool, at least use a location spoof tool (I use the "gs location changer" chrome extension). That's the first thing I thought of, unless you're located in the same town.

GS Location Changer is exactly what I am using to simulate the search as though I'm in Nederland, TX for the "florists" search in the second screenshot.

I understand that SABs have historically had issues with ranking well/etc., but this is a brand new issue entirely where the listings are just straight-up disappearing (doesn't show up in More Places even going to the very last listing in the SERP) unless the geo-modifier is added. Which as we all know, not all potential Google users are going to include the names of the cities/etc. and sometimes just do a search for plumbers/florists/locksmiths/etc.

We did re-add the address onto the listing (they do accept walk-ins but prefer not to except during the busier times of year) shortly after I made this post and now they are showing at #1 on the 3-pack again for the basic "florists" search when I have my location spoofed to Nederland, TX—same as what Elizabeth shows in her screenshot also, which you can see their map pin on the right, which is absent in my initial screenshots on 3/29 when they were still an SAB.

All in all I do believe there's definitely something buggy going on that is more than the simple ranking issues we've all seen with SABs.

I have another florist (my primary clientele) in Batavia, IL that is also now being affected by this.

Can see in this one that they are ranking at #1 on both organic and Maps with the geo-modifier included.

But in this one...

With location spoofed to Batavia, IL and doing the basic "florists" search, their Maps listing disappears again. And again, it is nowhere to be seen when clicking into "More Places" either. Organic still at #1, and you can see one of the competitor listings (Farmdog Flowers) is now at #1 with their physical storefront. The other listing that was at #3 in the first screenshot is also gone, as it was also an SAB.

Obviously I'm not expecting a "fix" of any kind for this since it's an issue on Google's end specific to SABs, but I do think it would be worth some more research.

 

[ElizabethRule]

The article I shared above highlights that hiding your address and becoming an SAB does indeed impact rankings - I am not sure I would classify this as a "bug" but certainly something Google says should not be happening as they claim there is no ranking difference between SABs and address shown businesses.

You can always tweet this example at the Search Liaison on Twitter and see if he will look into it!

• https://twitter.com/searchliaison
• https://twitter.com/dannysullivan
  

 

[Cordell Crowley]

Joy's article was great—but I guess part of my disconnect is I feel that there is a key difference in "drop in rankings" versus "disappearing entirely". Going from 1 to 9 or 2 to 14, and examples like that, would follow that trend and I wouldn't question it beyond "oh, Google's causing SABs to rank lower again". But going from 1 to Nothing or 2 to Nothing... Idk, I feel like that's a separate issue.

I wasn't aware Danny was keyed in on Google Maps algo versus just the core Google search (website results), but I'll give it a shot. Tempted to just start having all of our SAB clients show their addresses anyway despite Google's guidelines (which I know Joy has also alluded to somewhat).

 

[ElizabethRule]

Oh that's a good point, not sure if Danny is keyed into Maps algo!! In that case, try tagging the GBP account https://twitter.com/googlemybiz?lang=en

I agree, loss of rankings vs dropping is different. Have you tracked this with a Local Rank Tracking gird yet to see if you lose rankings across the board?

 

[Cordell Crowley]

So providing an update on this if anyone is curious and/or wanted to see some more data. The client I'd posted about in the initial post—Sparkle and Co. Florist in Nederland, TX—had shown their address and immediately started showing up in the 3-pack, higher on Maps, etc. That is still the case several months later, no other weird drops in rankings or anything.

We had another client we were watching that was affected by this—Lula's Floral and Gifts in Glenwood, IL. They were a service area business that had not been ranking in the 3-pack at all these last several months despite a top 1 or 2 organic ranking for most of the keywords in their area. They just recently moved to a retail storefront and we got their GBP Address updated (for reference the address is just a couple miles away from the residential one they had, so it's not a case of moving significantly closer to the centroid) and almost immediately they began showing up properly in the 3-pack again, as well as some positive movement on Google Maps/finder.

Here's a link to a Google Drive folder with a quick snapshot showing Sparkle and Co. Florist showing #1 in the 3 pack for the same query they weren't showing for at all for me back in my original 3/29 post. Also Lula's Floral and Gifts being tracked with Whitespark rank tracker showing an immediate "fix" to appearing in the local pack when we changed from SAB to retail, as well as some immediate boosts to their Maps/finder rankings. I forgot to take a screenshot of Lula's when they were not showing, but we've had them tracked with WS for 4 or so months so you can see the long period of having nothing to suddenly appearing. Not sure about the weird blip between 8/13 and 8/20 where they disappeared again, possibly just Google adjusting to the new address, but we're going to continue watching it. Also still not ranking on all the keywords we're tracking, but it's still immediate positive movement on some of them.

I'm pretty confident through the past few months of going back and forth with testing and talking to clients who have had issues (Granted, all florists since that's who my company serves so maybe that's part of it/an industry thing) that this is a pretty cut and dry thing where their ability to be displayed in the 3-pack is just straight-up non-existent for non-geo modified keywords. Haven't really seen it discussed at all elsewhere in the industry unless I've just missed it, so I figured a follow-up after a few months with some new data would be nice.

 

[ElizabethRule]

Appreciate the follow-up Cordell! It's kind of wild that SABs are at such a disadvantage compared to retail stores. Perhaps in the florist space, having the address showing is just "necessary" due to the competition or some other reason, but I am so curious to know if anyone else has experienced this same issue in other industries where rankings didn't just drop, they completely disappeared off maps. I'm going to be asking others about this so I'll report back if I find anything.

 

[JS Girard]

This is exactly coherent with the phenomenon observed in the test Elizabeth linked early in the thread. I've also witnessed it for many clients, especially in the home services verticals.

I've taken to referring to it as the "SAB punishing bug". It's a maddening phenomenon because there is absolutely no way to predict whether a profile will get affected by it. You can have two profiles that shares almost identical characteristics and one will be affected but the other isn't...

 

[Tim Colling]

Google claims that SABs should not rank any worse than businesses with their address showing, but that is not the case when we tested it

Google lies. Often. <sigh>